Trauma and Community Coverage

Reporting the Stories That Shape Lives

We gathered in a familiar place, sadly, for a familiar reason. At the front of the courtroom sat a young man in handcuffs and shackles.

A few months earlier, he'd gotten drunk, climbed behind the wheel of his muscle car and raced at 80 mph through the heart of downtown. The ride ended with three deaths. Two of the victims were his friends and passengers. The third was a grandmother, driving home from work. Her life ended just a few blocks from the safety of her home.

 The young man was in court for sentencing. Similar stories were playing out around the country that day, from Nashville to New York City.

For those touched by this particular case there was no bigger story. Every seat in the courtroom was filled. People spilled into the hallway. There were tears of remembrance for lives ended too soon and discussion about the things a man must do to earn forgiveness. 

The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma has given reporters around the globe more tools for covering emotionally charged stories. Journalists are heading into war zones, covering serial murders and terrorist acts with a better understanding of how to do their jobs without needlessly contributing to the suffering around them. There also is growing recognition that reporters need to take steps to minimize the corrosive exposure to such assignments.

The longer I work in journalism, the more I see the need for these same tools to be used by reporters who cover the big stories in smaller places. 

Writing about personal tragedies at a community level usually means writing stories that don't make national headlines. These are stories about drunken driving accidents or fatal fires or drownings or murders that at first glance seem noteworthy only in their numbing repetition. 

Yet these are the stories that shape lives in the places where most journalists work. These are the stories that become yellowed clippings in scrapbooks. They have the power to speak across generations. They tell us what matters.

At my newspaper, we've come to recognize the connection we have with the community we write about. It is a relationship that we actively consider when covering trauma and violence. 

We've brought in readers to discuss our coverage of tragedy as it has unfolded. We've listened when people have told us they want more context, more complexity and less body count. We've taken seriously the suggestion that we let pain follow its own deadlines. We've heard that the newspaper has an important role to play in helping a community grieve.

That experimentation has paid off in our pages.

The story of the young man who killed three was reported across the months by several people on staff. We had the usual stories. We were there the night of the collision. We attended memorial services and wrote more about those who died. We reported how the driver was in a court-supervised drug treatment program and had broken the law even before he got behind the wheel.

There was also more.

A grief counselor familiar with our approach to sensitive stories called one day. Her client was the mother of one of the young men killed in the crash. She had encouraged the mother to tell us about her son. She knew it would be healing for her client, and the community, to read about a promising young man who had made countless good choices and one fatal one.

The man whose wife was killed in the crash told one of our columnists what it was like to lose his partner of 32 years. As the sentencing neared, he wrote the paper, saying that all he wanted from the young man who killed his wife was a reason to one day forgive him.

In the courtroom, all of what had been reported in the case still resonated, particularly the widower's letter. The judge asked the young man if he had read the paper. He nodded, blinking back tears.

Hang on to that clipping, the judge said. Read it every day.